Imprimez à Paris pour Anthoine Verard, libraire demourant à Paris devant la rue Neuve Nostredame à lymaige Sainct Jehan l’évagelliste ou au palais devant la chapelle ou l’onchante la messe de messeigneurs des présidens, n.d. (1503).
3 parts in 2 volumes folio [333 x 223 mm] of: I/ (10) ll., 201 ll. including one large engraving, II/ (8) ll., 202 ll., (6) ll., 128 ll., small restored tear in the lower corner of p. 1 of part 1 and in the lower part of the title of part 2. Full red morocco, covers framed with gilt fillets, spines ribbed finely decorated, inner border, gilt edges. Bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet.
Second original edition, very close to the first one published this same year 1503.
Mac Farlane n° 176 ; Tchemerzine, IV, 859. 861 ; Brunet III, 1831‑183 ; Bechtel M-469.
Exceptional copy for its wide margins: height 334 mm.
Precious Gothic edition of great rarity of the Chronicles of France and England considered as “one of the masterpieces of French Gothic printing.”
It is the second edition after the princeps, also printed for Verard at the beginning of 1503: 45 lines per column, at the address: “devant la Rue Neuve Notre-Dame” which allows to date it 1503, whereas the previous edition is at the address “à petit pont“.
The typographical quality of this very elegant Gothic edition is underlined by the bibliographers.
“These two editions (by Monstrelet) are the most beautiful that have been printed in Gothic letters. (Brunet).
Enguerrand de Monstrelet was attached to the service of Jean de Luxembourg and was bailiff of Compiègne in 1430. When Joan of Arc fell to the Burgundians, Monstrelet attended her meeting with the Duke of Burgundy. As provost of Cambrai in 1444, he undertook on his own initiative to continue Froissart’s Chronicle which had stopped in 1400.
His very valuable chronicle covers the years 1400 to 1467. He wrote the first two books himself; the third is the work of Matthieu de Covey or Escouchey, his successor.
Monstrelet wants to be a fierce and accurate columnist of France traumatized by the hundred year war: civil wars between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy, occupation of Paris and Normandy by the English, expulsion of the English from French territory…
Rabelais castigated ferociously Monstrelet in his Pantagruel (Book III). Reproaching him for being “slobbery as a mustard pot“, he assigns him “a green and yellow chaperon with hare’s ears“.
This harsh judgement is contradicted by historical critics who see Monstrelet as an “exact and conscientious” chronicler, concerned with the seriousness of his information, the accuracy of his dates, and a simple and clear style.
Douet d’Arcq thus recognizes that this chronicle contains “very instructive pieces which make it the surest guide to penetrate the very complex details of the facts that marked the first half of the 15th century“.
Monstrelet’s chronicle is an important testimony to the history of the first half of the 15th century.
“It is an original account, in which the author skillfully mixes written sources and oral testimonies. He confronts his different information, verifies it, criticizes it, and adds his personal experience“.
References: R. de Brandt de Galametz, Le chroniqueur Monstrelet gentilhomme picard, Abbeville, 1886, extracted from Mémoires de la société d’émulation d’Abbeville. – A. Lesort, Notes biographiques sur le chroniqueur Enguerrand de Monstrelet, Paris, 1909, from the Bulletin historique et philologique. – H. Moranvillé, Note sur quelques passages de Monstrelet, in BEC, t. 62 (1901), p. 52-56.
This Gothic edition opens on each of the 3 titles with a beautiful initial l, in a calligraphic style with grotesque profile very evocative of the Verard fund (105 x 48 mm).
This initial is found in the “Hortus Sanitatis” printed for Vérard around 1500, (reproduced in Fairfax Murray. Early French books, n°227) and in the “Epistles of St Pol“, n.d. (reproduced in Claudin. Histoire de l’Imprimerie. II. p 503).
A splendid woodcut (180 x 150 mm) (said to be the siege of Lille, different from the woodcut of the first edition) represents king and soldiers in armor and fighting before a besieged city, on folio 163 of vol. 1. The elegant scene is well drawn and the architectural details of great beauty.
“The drawing is firm, the sizes untied. There is suppleness in the attitudes of the characters in the foreground, whose faces express the diversity of feelings that move them”.
Vérard’s large mark is affixed to the front of the last leaf of the second volume (Renouard, 1088).
Monstrelet lived most of his life in Cambrai, a possession of the Duke of Burgundy. He had been provided since 1436 with the office of lieutenant of gavenier of Cambrai, – the gaves or gavènes being the annual royalty that the subjects of the churches of Cambraisis paid to the duke of Burgundy, for the guard of his churches, which belonged to him in quality of count of Flanders -. Bailiff of the chapter of Cambrai in 1436, he became provost of the city of Cambrai, and remained so until his death in mid-July 1453. As a historian, he accompanied Duke Philippe on his travels and campaigns, which enabled him to describe a number of events of which he had been the visual witness. As proof, his translation of Duke Philippe’s visit to Jeanne, after her capture under the walls of Compiègne: “which (Jeanne) icelui duc went to see in the dwelling where she was, and spoke to her no words, of which I am not well recors, jà soit ce que j’y étois présent” – a disarming admission of candour on the part of the chronicler.
Monstrelet sees himself as the continuator of Froissart’s work: “And this present Chronicle will begin on the day of Easter, the year of grace 1400, at which time the last volume of what was done and composed, in his time, by this prudent and very renowned historian, Master Jean Froissart, born in Valenciennes, in Hainaut, whose fame will last for a long time because of his noble works, will be finished”.
The first volume of Monstrelet stops in 1422 “at the death of the most Christian king of France of very noble memory, Charles the Beloved, sixth of that name”.
The second volume covers the period from October 1422 to the year of grace 1444.
The third volume cannot be attributed to Monstrelet, and we agree perfectly with the opinion of the historian Buchon, who in 1836 in his “Choix de chroniques et mémoires de l’histoire de France” attributed the facts recounted from 1444 to 1467 to Matthieu d’Escouchy, Monstrelet having died in 1455. Matthieu d’Escouchy himself states that Monstrelet stopped in 1444 and that he therefore begins his continuation from that year. With the war in Ghent, Matthieu d’Escouchy almost literally takes over the writings of another chronicler: J. du Clercq, and this until 1467, the end of the third volume and of our second volume.
The presentation in two parts of Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s three volumes of chronicles by the publisher and printer Antoine Vérard can be explained by the fact that he was of course not aware of this later research. In any case, his presentation of the chronicles in two parts is perfectly balanced: the first part covers volume I and contains 313 folios. The second 345, respectively 210 folios for volume II and 135 for volume III.
On folio 00ii of the first volume, the extraordinary lament of the poor common man and the poor labourers of France:
Hélas ! hélas ! hélas ! hélas ! Gens d’armes et les trois estats,
Prélas, princes et bons seigneurs, Qui vivez sur nous laboureurs,
Bourgeois, marchands et avocats, Confortez nous d’aucun bon ayde,
Gens de mestiers grans et mineurs Vivre nous fault, c’est le remède…
Remarkable copy of Sir Edward Sullivan, extremely wide- margined, covered with a rich red morocco binding by Trautz-Bauzonnet, described in the Sotheby’s sale of June 3, 1890, n°1440 as: “Very fine copy in red morocco super extra“, £ 21-10s to Rimell; William O’Brien, bequest booklabel dated 1899; library stamp on titles. This was one of the more expensive books bought by O’Brien.
This superb copy of one of the founding books of the history of France, printed in 1503, is extremely rare in fine condition.
